Graves
by Bonsoir
Summary: FE13. Gerome believes in graves.


**Title:** Graves  
**Characters:** Gerome, Lucina  
**Genre:** Angst, Family  
**Words:** 1,041  
**Notes:** There's a mix of freeverse and prose for this story. I'm not much for poetry but I feel that it worked pretty well for this particular piece. Feedback is appreciated as always. Thank you for reading!  
**Warning:** This contains quite a few spoilers. The fall that is mentioned is something Gerome warns his father about in one of their (I believe) conversations in the barracks. A lot of the interaction between Gerome's parents is headcanon.

* * *

Gerome believes in graves—  
In having them and in visiting them:  
A great rock to mark the location  
And flowers to pretty it up  
Like his mother used to pretty up the house  
When his father brought her an armful of tulips  
And said something sappy like,  
"You're as pretty now  
As you were the day I proposed."

His memories of his parents are few and scattered on the wind like the leaves in autumn. His father's broad chest with pale scars cutting across it and his mother's tea with exactly two teaspoons of sugar in each cup—no cream.

The only grave thing in the past is his face.  
The lines in his forehead make him look old,  
Lucina worries,  
And the way his lips turn down make him appear too serious,  
Inigo teases;  
But Gerome _is_ serious, and  
He feels old—  
Just like everyone else.  
Inigo hides it with a smile,  
And Lucina with the word, _father_.  
Gerome is the one with the mask,  
But the others are the ones who are actually  
Hiding.

His mother taught him to sew. His father taught him to love. Both taught him to fight, and fighting is the only thing that has gotten him this far. Fighting is survival is life is existence.

The fall almost killed her—  
His mother.  
Both legs broken and her head split open.  
His father nearly died from the fear.  
His mother nearly died.

Minerva won't fly very high anymore with a rider on her back and she doesn't like it when Cherche—not mother-Cherche; just Cherche—goes too far above the trees. Maybe Minerva remembers the broken form of her friend against the field. Maybe it haunts her like it had haunted Gerome to see his mother in bed for months afterward, first from her injuries and then from the headaches.

Minerva came to him and  
He knew.  
He knew he was alone and  
The thought made him feel sick inside,  
As if he'd eaten too many green apples.

Crying was worthless but he was too young to know better, and he had cried into Minerva's scaly hide for hours until he exhausted himself. It hurt to wake up the next morning alone, hurt to know that he would always be that way, but Minerva would not have left his parents if they had lived, and wyverns did not attach themselves to bodies, but to spirits, and the spirits of his mother and father were gone. Forever.

_Here lies_—  
No.  
There is no grave;  
There are no bodies.  
He feels empty without it,  
Without closure,  
Without something tangible.

Gerome digs a hole—the best he can do, the best any ten-year-old can manage with skinny little arms. His tongue pokes out of his mouth as he wraps things in his mother's hand-sewn doilies and packs them in a little box.

The letters  
From his father  
"To my pretty bride"  
Even when she was not so pretty anymore  
After the fall.  
His mother's favorite teacup—  
A chip in the handle;  
She said Duke Virion of Rosanne  
Sent it as a wedding gift.  
Hair ribbons and razors,  
Perfume,  
Cologne,  
And the baby quilt his mother had sewn  
From his father's old clothes  
To keep their things warm—  
Or maybe the memory of them—  
Just in case.

He shook the dirt out of his messy blond hair and bathed in the creek because no one could tell him it was wrong or dangerous—not anymore. The sun was cold and he wondered what he would do when the snow started falling. He wondered if Exalt Lucina had hurt this much to lose her own parents.

He returned to the house naked,  
And put on a pair of his father's trousers,  
Pulled on his mother's robe,  
And wrapped himself in the blankets on their bed  
Just to smell them for a while,  
Just to pretend that  
Everything would be okay.

In the spring he planted flowers over the place where he had buried his parents' things. It was strange to walk into the kitchen and not hear, "Gerome, honey, you'd better not be tracking mud into my clean house, do you hear me?"

Still, he scraped his boots at the door,  
And kept the floors clean.  
He scrubbed like his mother and  
Worked like his father and  
Tried to pretend that  
Everything was normal.

His only regret in leaving the future is leaving that grave behind; it _is_ a grave, since there are reminders buried there, little pieces of his parents. He can't bear to look at Cherche's tea set, given to her by Duke Virion of Rosanne, because it looks too much like the one buried in the future—with the chip by the handle.

Lucina doesn't shake her head at him  
When she catches him in the backyard  
Planting tulips with his hair  
Falling in his face and  
Dirt under his fingernails.  
She doesn't say,  
"Are you crazy?"  
She doesn't say,  
"Cherche is your mother, you know."  
She doesn't say,  
"What's the matter with you, Gerome?"  
She just kneels next to him and says,  
"May I help?"

She tells him she misses her real parents, and for the first time, he realizes that she is not naïve—and perhaps no one is, really. She calls Chrom "Father" but she knows he's not her father, not _her_ father, not the man who raised her and taught her and loved her and died for her. Gerome can't call the Vaike and Cherche of this time by those names—those endearments. They mean too much.

He lost them once.  
Isn't once enough?  
Isn't once too much  
For a child—  
Boy—  
Man—  
To deal with?

He feels fortunate: to have Lucina with him, to see what his parents were like when they were younger, to have the chance to live in a time like this, where Minerva is not alone and he is not alone and there is still a future.

"I know this seems silly,"  
He tries to say,  
But Lucina stops him with  
A shake of her head  
And her dirty fingers slipping through his.  
"Can we plant lilacs?"  
She asks, leaning her head against his shoulder.  
"My mother,  
She loved lilacs."


End file.
